Home For Christmas
December was the worst in that little town. Windham was north of nowhere, deep in the woods, somewhere at the end of the world. At night, it got so quiet the only thing you’d hear passing by on the main road was logging trucks. And they were all headed somewhere else. Lucky them.
Her family lived in a cramped old cabin and had nothing. No heat in the winter, barely any space, three people to a bedroom, only old hand-me-down clothes, inappropriate for below-zero weather. And in those awful Decembers, the snow would be up to your knees, so deep that walking from your door to the neighbors’ cabin felt like a million years. The power lines would often come down in particularly bad blizzards, and the power company didn’t exactly prioritize Windham, so there was no telling how long the whole street would be dark. Even though Windham looked like a Christmas card, there was nothing festive about it.
She picked a bad month to run away. But she was never the planning type, and she’d had it.
Robin thought of running away a lot before she actually did it. Her dad ran away. She heard from a girl at school who heard from someone else that he hopped into a train car one night and that was that. He didn’t even say anything before going. Not even an “I’m going to buy milk,” kind of thing.
Her brother Will told her that the train went all the way across the country. You could get on it at night and go east into the sunrise. Maybe you could get all the way to the other coast. It took a long, long time to ride the train that far. But once you got there it would be worth it.
“I could bring the cat, and I could bring Danny,” Robin said when she told Will about her plan. She was sitting on the floor in front of the TV that night. Will was on the couch, and the youngest brother, Danny, was next to him. Mom was in the kitchen, making a frozen pizza in the oven. It smelled good, and they were all hungry.
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Will. “Think of our dinner, for example. You can’t have pizza wherever the train goes.”
“Why?”
“Cause Mom won’t be there to buy it for you, stupid.”
“Why don’t we all just get on a train?” she asked Will, as MTV cut to a lame commercial break.
“Cause we’d have to leave the TV,” said Will, “And the oven, and electricity, and our beds, and the space heater, which we wouldn’t be able to plug into anything.”
“Yeah,” she said, “But Mom could get a house like this somewhere else. If we could get this one, we could get another one.”
“It’s not that easy,” said Will.
She sighed and hugged her knees, but she didn’t say anything else. After all, Will knew about these things. At fifteen, he knew everything. Robin was only thirteen. She wasn’t even in algebra yet.
“If we stay here at home,” said Danny, who was six, “Dad can find us when he comes home.”
He had a point. If they didn’t know where Dad was, they weren’t gonna be able to find him. They didn’t even have an address to send him a letter.
Will didn’t say anything else, probably for Danny's sake. But Robin knew how he felt about Dad. Mom came in later with the pizza cut up on plastic plates, and she handed them around.
“I’m still hungry,” Danny said so that Mom couldn’t hear.
“Eat it slow," said Will. "And drink lots of water so you get full."
Johnny Cash was on TV. Even though it was grainy and the picture kept going in and out, and the sound was staticky and dull, Robin listened all the way through when he sang Wayfaring Stranger. She wanted to go wherever he was singing about going. When he said he was “going there to see my father.” She related to it, whatever it meant. She wanted to go “home”. Even though that was technically where she was now.
“What does wayfaring mean?” she said.
“It means traveling,” said Will. “A wayfaring stranger is a traveler people don’t know. Like a drifter or a squatter or hobo. Stop asking so many questions.”
The woods were pretty at sunset. Even in the winter, when sunset was at four.
She just followed the tracks and followed the tracks. That’s how you found trains, right? She didn’t like that she was walking at night, but daytime wasn’t ideal for running away, because she'd get seen. That’s what she figured anyway.
By dawn, you’ll be on your way home, she told herself. Maybe you’ll spend Christmas with Dad again.
The sun was golden before, but it dropped fast. It had already gone below the treeline, and soon it would disappear. It had been clear and sunny that day, but now the clouds moved across the sky, and the dark purple came, with the orange turning bloody red, then turning darker and fading.
She thought of going back to the cabin. Maybe she could spend one more night somewhere with a bed and blankets, even if there was only a space heater to huddle around, and the blankets had moth holes.
She could’ve thought this through more. Maybe even had someone help her get to a station or something. But that would be one more person who'd know she was leaving.
“It’s not Mom’s fault Dad left,” Will said one day, as they rode their bikes down the road alongside each other. That was back in the summer three or four years ago. It was shadier under the pines, but it was still sticky out.
“Mom’s a bitch,” Robin said. “She drove him away.”
“Where’d you learn that word?” said Will.
“Lots of people say it. Christina says it all the time. And so does Sarah to her mom.”
“Well you don’t need to say it,” said Will. “You’re way too young. And Mom’s not a bitch. Dad left on his own. Even if he didn’t like Mom, he could’ve at least told us where he was going. If he thought Mom was such a bad parent, he could’ve taken us with him.”
“Mom doesn’t even try, and she doesn’t give a crap about us. She’s always out.”
“She’s out because she’s working,” said Will, as they rounded the bend in the road over a rickety old bridge that led onto a bigger road. “She’s working so she can take care of us and Danny.”
“She wouldn’t have to work so hard if she didn’t drive Dad away.”
“I told you, she didn’t drive dad away!”
“She did. She’s a bitch. She’s always in a bad mood. No wonder he didn't want to be around her.”
“I don’t wanna go in circles about this,” said Will. “I just wanna go to the arcade.”
“Robin,” said Mrs. Walker, one Friday afternoon, during extra help, “Are you just not understanding this concept? The crust of the earth is what we walk on. Below that is the mantle. Below that is the outer core– that’s the first part of the center of the earth. Below that is the inner core.”
“I get it,” said Robin.
Snow was falling outside, and Robin could hear other kids having fun out in the schoolyard.
“Okay, but can you label it on this worksheet?”
“No,” said Robin.
“Well… Why not?”
“I can’t remember it.”
Mrs. Walker looked like she was trying not to say things that would damage Robin’s developing self image. Robin didn’t really care. She’d rather Mrs. Walker just spit it out.
“Is it… hard for you to remember?”
“No,” said Robin.
“Then what’s the issue?”
“I don’t know.”
Mrs. Walker took a deep breath. “Okay. Well, how about we move on to your math homework. I’m glad that you’re here for extra help. I can tell you really want to do well. Now, I’ve noticed that when we do Order of Operations problems in class, you have trouble with the multiplication part. Do you know all your multiplication tables?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay… Well, do you want to try going over some now?”
“No.”
“Alright. Well, maybe we can just do the four times tables. Do you know what four times one is?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s four. Any number times one is itself. How about four times two?”
“Forty.”
“You know it’s not forty.”
“Yeah, but I don’t really care.”
“Robin, how are things at home?”
“Good.”
Mrs. Walker looked like she wanted to retire.
Leaving the cabin without a word to Danny or Will was the worst part. Even if Danny was little and annoying and liked to make a ton of noise, she would still miss him. Even if Will was a know-it-all who didn’t agree with Robin about Mom and Dad, he was still her brother, and he always protected her when she got picked on at school. Or if there was a mean neighborhood dog.
But she left through the back door anyway, without a word. She told herself she’d come back for them.
-xxx-
Robin spent a lot of time looking at one picture of her dad. She was a baby in the photo, and he was holding her. He looked so happy. Like he had all the time for her in the world. The Christmas tree stood in the background, and you could see snow outside the window.
When she got off the train and saw her dad again, she already knew what would happen. She rehearsed everything she’d say.
“Robin, is that you?” he would ask when she knocked on his door. “Look how big you’ve gotten! I’ve missed you so much.”
“I came all this way on the train, just like you did,” she’d say.
“Oh, I’m so proud of you,” he’d say. “I've even set up this whole room for you, for when I was planning to come get you kids. You don't even have to share with Will and Danny anymore. I gave them the room in the attic. I’ve been holding onto all these Christmas presents I got you every year. Now you can open them all!”
Robin didn’t remember when she collapsed in the snow and fell asleep. It must’ve been warm and comfortable, for her to fall asleep that easily. All she remembered was being tired and worn out one moment, and being on the ground the next.
A bright light shone in her eyes. Maybe this was the same light people always said they saw as they were dying. But she opened her eyes and realized she was very much alive.
“What’s your name, young lady?”
A policeman stood over her, shining a flashlight in her eyes.
“Robin Sullivan,” she said, as sirens blared.
When Robin woke up in the hospital, her mother was in a bad mood, muttering something about expenses, and paperwork, and insurance. But she smiled through her annoyance when Robin sat up.
“Well, Danny’s certainly been worried about you,” she said. "You're lucky you didn't freeze to death, good Lord! What were you thinking? Were you trying to ruin everyone's Christmas?"
Danny came rushing over and threw himself onto the hospital bed.
“My sister! She’s back!”
Will gave her an awkward one-armed hug and said, “Here’s a tip next time you wanna run away: Bring a map or something. I didn't even need to look for you. You were only a couple hundred feet from the house the whole time, idiot.”
“Your father isn’t coming to visit,” said her mother. “I heard he’s been arrested. Again. I swear, that man is one bad day away from a lifetime in prison. And I'd be happy to see it!"
After a pause her mother said. “Robin, you gotta do better in school is all I’ll say. Don’t wanna turn out like him.”
Robin ate a soggy hospital meal for her Christmas Dinner, just a pale and tasteless ham and mustard sandwich. And she opened her Christmas presents in that uncomfortable bed. The mattress felt like cardboard, and nurses would rush in and out to take her vitals. But Danny had made her a card with construction paper and glitter glue, and everyone signed it. She assumed it was supposed to say, "Welcome Home, Robin." But everything was spelled wrong.
When she got back to the cabin, nothing had changed at all. Except for the tiny fake Christmas tree, which someone had plugged in while she was away. As she sat there with her brothers by the fireplace, she listened to Danny yelling Christmas songs, and Will yelling at Danny for eating all the cookies. Her brothers needed her. And so did her mother, to some extent.
Robin knew she didn’t like this home as much as the one she’d invented for herself. But it was her home. It was real. And she accepted it, with a half smile.
Maybe she’d pay more attention in school from now on.